The Post-9/11 GI Bill: Beneficiaries, Choices, and Cost

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE

The Post-9/11 GI Bill: Beneficiaries,

Choices, and Cost

MAY 2019

? Sean Locke Photography/

At a Glance

Beginning August 1, 2009, the Post-9/11 GI Bill extended educational benefits to service members who were on active duty in the military after September 10, 2001. This GI Bill is the most extensive educational package ever offered to current and former service members. The Congressional Budget Office examined the law's cost, its beneficiaries, and their educational choices and reviewed research related to some of the law's stated purposes.

?? Benefits. Beneficiaries are eligible for 36 months of education, including

full tuition and fees at the in-state rate for programs at any public institution of their choice (or up to $23,672 for the 2018?2019 academic year toward tuition and fees at private schools), a housing allowance, books and supplies, and other related expenses. Benefits may be transferred to family members once service members have been in the military between 6 and 16 years.

?? Choices. Beneficiaries choose colleges--often public--more than other

types of educational programs or training. However, veterans and spouses are more likely than the average U.S. student to choose for-profit programs. For-profit schools have received a disproportionate share of money for tuition and fees relative to the number of Post-9/11 GI Bill students.

?? Spending. The Veterans Benefits Administration spent $65 billion (in

2018 dollars) on about 1.6 million beneficiaries in the seven years from the law's inception through 2016, including about $11 billion in 2016 (an average of $17,400 per student). Most spending was for veterans, and the remainder was for spouses and children. Housing accounted for about half of annual total spending. Tuition and fees were most of the rest.

?? Success of Program. Recent research indicates that, like prior educational

benefits, the Post-9/11 GI Bill attracts additional high-quality military recruits but makes retaining service members more difficult.

publication/55179

Contents

Summary

1

What Benefits Does the Post-9/11 GI Bill Offer?

1

How Much Is Spent on the Law's Benefits?

1

What Types of Schools Do Beneficiaries Attend?

2

Does the Law Meet Its Objectives?

2

Overview of Benefits

3

Objectives of the Law

3

Benefits Provided by the Law

3

Eligibility for Benefits

4

Eligible Schools and Programs

5

How the Post-9/11 GI Bill Compares With Other Educational Aid

6

The Veterans Benefits Administration's Data on the Post-9/11 GI Bill

7

Beneficiaries

7

Institutions

7

Additional Data

8

Limitations of CBO's Analysis

8

Spending on the Post-9/11 GI Bill

9

Spending for Beneficiaries in 2016

9

Payments to Institutions in 2017

12

Effectiveness in Achieving Program Objectives

14

The GI Bill's Effects on Recruitment and Retention

14

The GI Bill's Effect on Veterans' Readjustment to Civilian Life

15

List of Tables and Figures

19

About This Document

20

Notes

Unless otherwise specified, all years referred to in this report are federal fiscal years, which run from October 1 to September 30 and are designated by the calendar year in which they end.

All dollar values are expressed in 2018 dollars and are adjusted for inflation using the Bureau of Economic Analysis's price index for the gross domestic product.

This report uses the terms spending and payments to refer to outlays, which are payments by the federal government to meet a legal obligation. Outlays may be made for obligations incurred in a prior fiscal year or in the current year.

Numbers in the text and tables may not add up to totals because of rounding.

The Post-9/11 GI Bill: Beneficiaries, Choices, and Cost

Summary

Beginning August 1, 2009, the Post-9/11 GI Bill extended educational benefits to service members who were on active duty in the military on or after September 11, 2001. This GI Bill (officially the Post9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008), the latest version of a law that helps veterans pay for higher education, provides more extensive benefits than have ever been offered to current and former service members, enabling them to transfer its benefits to certain family members and to enroll in a wide array of educational and training programs. In March 2019, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reported that in 2018 it spent about $10.7 billion on 700,000 beneficiaries of the Post-9/11 GI Bill.

At the request of the House Budget Committee, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed data from VA to understand the law's cost, the types of educational programs beneficiaries enrolled in, and the institutions they attended. CBO also reviewed research related to some of the law's stated purposes, such as motivating people to join or stay in the military and using the educational benefits as part of readjusting to civilian life. This analysis primarily describes spending in 2016, with some information from 2017 and some historical data from 2009 onward.

What Benefits Does the Post-9/11 GI Bill Offer? The Post-9/11 GI Bill is more generous than earlier GI bills. Beneficiaries are eligible for 36 months of postsecondary education, including full tuition and fees at public colleges and universities (or up to $23,672 for the 2018?2019 academic year toward tuition and fees at private schools), as well as a housing allowance, books and supplies, and other related expenses. After 2009, the Congress further expanded the law, among other things allowing benefits to be used for nondegree and apprenticeship programs. The amount of benefits people receive depends on the length of their qualifying active-duty service (partial benefits are available with a minimum

of 90 days' service), enrollment status (full time or part time), and the type of school or program they enroll in.

The Post-9/11 GI Bill differs from its predecessors in several important ways: There is no specific dollar limit on tuition and fees for programs at public institutions; benefits may be transferred to spouses or children once members have served between 6 and 16 years in the military; and students generally may use the benefit at any point in time.

How Much Is Spent on the Law's Benefits? The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) spent $65 billion (in 2018 dollars) on about 1.6 million beneficiaries in the seven years from the law's inception through 2016, CBO estimates (see Figure 1). In that year (the most recent year for which beneficiary data were available), most spending on the Post-9/11 GI Bill (82 percent) was for veterans, and the remainder was for spouses and children. Total annual benefits were, on average $17,400 per person. (Active-duty personnel, who are about 10 percent of Post-9/11 GI Bill recipients annually, were excluded from the analysis of beneficiaries.) Tuition, fees, and housing accounted for 95 percent of total spending in that year.

The housing allowance, the most expensive of the law's benefits, is set at the amount of the Department of Defense's monthly basic housing allowance. It accounted for about half of the spending for veterans, about 45 percent of the spending for children, and 30 percent of the spending for spouses, who often received housing through the service member. Most beneficiaries (90 percent) attended programs more than half time, which qualified them for part or all of the housing benefit.

Spending was less per capita for students who enrolled in programs that were primarily online than it was for beneficiaries who attended brick-and-mortar schools, CBO estimates. That is because tuition and fees for online programs tend to be lower compared with other programs and

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download